Saturday Evening Open Thread: Just Relax! It’ll all be over soon!!!

Well, that little e-card over there has me nailed! Although, I’m usually in the bathtub on a Saturday night with the glass of wine and a book or the latest copy of one of my magazines. I thought we should have some nice downtime tonight while we’re waiting for the elections to finish. I’m really hoping we get to kick out some nasty old Republicans and bring in some great women who support reproductive health and other important causes like our spending priorities.

The book on my night stand is The Serpent and the Rainbow which is about zombies. Well, not exactly a zombie apocalypse but a rather old book on how Haitians actually created a zombie potion and a Harvard graduate student that went there to find it. It’s by Dr. Wade Davis and it’s nonfiction.

In April 1982, ethnobotanist Wade Davis arrived in Haiti to investigate two documented cases of zombis — people who had reappeared in Haitian society years after they had been officially declared dead and had been buried. Drawn into a netherworld of rituals and celebrations, Davis penetrated the vodoun mystique deeply enough to place zombification in its proper context within vodoun culture. In the course of his investigation, Davis came to realize that the story of vodoun is the history of Haiti — from the African origins of its people to the successful Haitian independence movement, down to the present day, where vodoun culture is, in effect, the government of Haiti’s countryside.

The Serpent and the Rainbow combines anthropological investigation with a remarkable personal adventure to illuminate and finally explain a phenomenon that has long fascinated Americans.

Yes, it’s full of graveyard visits and digging up the past!!

So, my Vanity Fair did come today and I’m also reading The Expendables. It’s about the French Foreign Legion. It’s written by William Langewiesche. It’s full of stories of the army built of volunteers from around the world. It’s one of the topics that I just love to watch in old movies including Abbott and Costello and then there’s the 1926 classic Beau Geste. You can watch 1937’s The Legion of Missing Men on You Tube in its entirety. It’s classic black and white and was filmed in Morocco.

So, you can see that I’m in an escapist mood where good guys win and science rules the day. Also, exotic places beckon that draw us away from the mundane nuts that rule our lives. For me, this means all a break from the TV and crazy political spin.

I also have a huge long play list that includes many, many French composers of the impressionist genre. I was highly influenced by both Debussy -who was a favorite of my mother and taught her piano teacher–and also by Ravel–who taught my piano professor who I studied with during High school. Here’s a Debussy Arabesque that served as my 7th grade recital piece.

So, this is my favorite Saturday Night activity–reading, sipping red wine, and listening to great piano music in a warm bath–when I’ve had a rough week. Yes, I’m that exciting!!

I’m just not very serious tonight. I did like your post, dak. My piano teacher was old and deaf. After playing a couple of recital duets with Chuck, a childhood friend, I ended my 5 years of lessons at the end of 7th grade.

I didn’t have an uncivil experience voting last week here in NC. Most likely at my voting site, the officials would call the police, pronto, if anything like those outbreaks occurred. Everywhere in the state, the poll watchers and campaign/party workers should be told, you follow the rules or you’re out of here. I may read more about this situation in my paper.

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The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.

You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.